Late yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said the Department of Treasury might make it into the first half of March before running out of cash to pay its bills, or a little later than Treasury’s latest update earlier in the day.
In November, CBO had projected that the statutory debt limit would not be reached until late March or early April. But because of legislation signed into law since the last estimate, most notably the tax code overhaul projected to lose at least $1 trillion in 10-year revenue, CBO is bumping up their time frame by a few weeks. Treasury’s own estimates, updated Wednesday, project borrowing can continue through Feb. 28, or slightly earlier.
Meanwhile, House and Senate Republicans are meeting for their three-day policy retreat in West Virginia. Republican leadership is confident they will avert another government shutdown. Currently, the House is preparing to pass a 6 week continuing resolution, which would keep the federal government open until March 22, 2018. Congress has yet to pass a long-term spending bill for fiscal year 2018, and lawmakers have relied on a series of short-term patches to keep the government open.
The House is expected to take up the measure early next week before the Democrats attend their annual retreat. Meanwhile, there appears to be little progress on spending caps and immigration. House and Senate leaders from both parties are negotiating a possible two-year spending deal that could include nearly $300 billion in additional appropriations, but the two sides remain apart on the distribution between defense and nondefense funds.
Meanwhile, discussions over both spending and immigration have halted virtually all other legislation moving and that could prevent Congress from advancing the Administration’s infrastructure proposal or proceeding to other legislative priorities for 2018.